Sixty per cent of companies are confident in investing in Wi-Fi, according to the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA)’s Industry report 2025.
Of the remainder, 19 per cent said that they were less confident, while another 19 per cent said their outlook hadn’t changed from the previous year.
The report also found that 81 per cent of respondents were planning deployments of WBA OpenRoaming, an 18.9 per cent increase on 2024. Of those, 25 per cent were already rolling out the technology, 42 per cent said they would deploy it in 2025 and 27 per cent were planning for 2026. This enthusiasm is driven largely by the benefits such as automatic authenticated connections that seamlessly move between Wi-Fi and cellular networks (5G/LTE), enhanced security and the end user experience.
Asked why they planned to invest in OpenRoaming or Passpoint compliant networks, the most popular response was to enable seamless access between Wi-Fi and 5G/LTE (44 per cent), followed closely by providing improved security on Wi-Fi (43 per cent). The third top reason was frictionless access to Wi-Fi (39 per cent), with enabling seamless access across different networks just behind (38 per cent).
Respondents also reported that 37 per cent had deployed Wi-Fi 6E, with 19 per cent stating they had deployed the latest Wi-Fi 7 standard, despite it being a new technology still in its earlier adoption phase. Some 27 per cent said that they had already deployed Wi-Fi sensing and 17 percent had done the same for Wi-Fi HaLow.
On the cellular side, 20 per cent said that they had deployed citizen broadband radio service, with 5G scoring 37 per cent by this same measure. Some 30 per cent said that they had already deployed private cellular and 24 per cent said they had deployed distributed antenna systems. Notably, 24 per cent said that they already have AI or cognitive access networks.
Tiago Rodrigues, CEO of the Wireless Broadband Alliance, said, “The WBA Industry Report 2025 gives all readers a clear view on the exciting juncture the world of Wi-Fi is at, and the momentum behind technologies such as, OpenRoaming, Wi-Fi 7 and Wi-Fi HaLow. Confidence to invest in Wi-Fi is growing, and industry members want to realize the benefits they offer such as lowering costs, simplifying management and improving the end-user experience.
"OpenRoaming has been a key focus in 2024 for the WBA and played a pivotal role in the activities of the Alliance, in part due to the growing number of global deployments but also from the ways it’s addressing verticals such as guest Wi-Fi, IoT, private cellular and more. I feel confident that this momentum will grow exponentially in the years ahead.”